Analysis Of The Devil In The White City By Erik Larson

They walk amongst us, thinly veiled by thoroughly thought out plans and deceitful alibis. In a time of great wonder and excitement, a murderer hides in plain sight. The title of Erik Larson’s accurately named novel, The Devil in the White City, takes the reader through a haunting story about the simultaneous building of the Chicago’ World Fair, which brought redemption to Chicago and happiness to Chicagoans; and the revealing of one of the very first serial killers, H.H. Holmes, which brought darkness and wreaked havoc though Chicago. In this novel, Erik Larson uses juxtaposition, sinister diction, and multiple different types of figurative language to portray the intense similarities and differences of an artist whose specialty is architecture, and an artist whose specialty is murder.

Larson states that Burnham and his architects had “conjured a dream city whose grandeur and beauty exceeded anything each singly could have imagined” (Larson 5). Although such beauty took place in Chicago, evil was present too. A murderer had been moving among the “beautiful things Burnham had created” (Larson 6). H.H. Holmes also uses juxtaposition when he said that he could not help being a murderer, “no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.” Although this quote is vaguely comparing the black and white of the city, it is directly showing the black and white of a murderer and a poet. Holmes is the murderer, and perhaps Burnham is the poet. While Burnham is trying to restore Chicago to beauty, purity, and pride, Holmes is working to tear it down even further, indulging in the darkness of